Discussion: Neat and unique orienteering control locations

Because of some unique control locations at the 2015 Flying Pig and US Team Trials this year, we thought we'd start a thread.

Please link or embed your own photos of unique sites.

Here's Middle course control #33, depression. The water running was audible as you approached the depression. Click photo for larger view, and subsequent close-up.

From Neat O control locations

Sure that shouldn't be a cave, rather than depression?

It's mapped as a depression. In the terrain it looks like a depression with a rocky pit at its center, but mapping both would clutter the map. I guess for extreme overmapping, you could add a small line of blue in the middle. :-)

The viewpoint of the photographer is looking downhill, rather than into the hillside. I'm standing at the edge of the wider depression.

The US Federal Cave Protection Act of 1988 forbids creating maps showing cave locations.

That applies ony to "significant" caves (I don't know if that one would qualify), and I think only on Federal lands.

Granted I have not been there in person to check it out, but wouldn't it make sense from a safety point of view to map it as a black 'V'?

We debated that. At one point I changed the depression (contour line depression as mapped originally by Zherdev) to a black V, which we had universally used for dangerous pits. The course setter protested that the depression was significantly larger than other pits and cup depressions mapped nearby, and that it would have been deceptive to show as a V because of the size. We agreed that we couldn't clutter the map to show both. So, I redrew the contour line depression, but insisted that the opening be heavily streamed and specified where to place the stand, safely away from the opening.

A good exercise / discussion in how to map without overcrowding.

The vertical boulder leaving against a tree is another cool one. Did anyone get a picture of that one?

"Cave" is a reasonably routine control description on Australian maps (mostly in Victoria) which cover old mine workings from various 19th century gold rushes, but the "caves" in question are almost always old mineshafts dug horizontally into hillsides.

Ten posts so far and yet only one photo. Disappointment.

Maybe there should be a flag in the picture? These are close by West Point and Harriman flags in years past:
1 and 2
Always behind the next boulder here Ward Pound Ridge, Westchester
This does fit the description: 3. Moreau in NY as I recall.
Always a nice CP default photo op US Military Academy

flowerpot at the Hopewell sprint (photo set includes another view of cave)

One of my all-time favorites, taken by Becky Carlyle:

Hopewell is certainly up there (one could even say "it rocks"). Swiss O week in Zermatt. The sprints at Niagara Falls Goat Island a couple years ago with controls at the top of both the American and Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls. A couple cool locations in past Golden Gate Sprints as well.

OK, here is another image.
Infamous Sam Smith placed a control today (#1 here) on a piece of Southern Heritage looking like this one

Idrefjällens Orienteringsklubb just sent us this one:

At our recent score-O training event there were bonus points for visiting all 5 car-wreck controls. The partially submerged one was not a control.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/132448499@N08/sets/7...

Bang! and for extra credit, name the runner.

I wasn't there, but the pink cat from WG2013 was pretty cool.

This was an interesting exposure.

This one is even more explicit. Who could resist....

Oh my god. It is the sprint master j-man, en route to a crushing victory over yet another hapless field of contenders assembled to challenge him. As if.

It's hard to detect the carnage from this photo, but by this point in the race he has already run over 3 pedestrians who foolishly refused to look up from their stupid phones ("served them right"), and he has also run through a chain link fence reinforced with massive mortar blocks ("they called *that" uncrossable?!"). A man not to be trifled with, for sure.

"Sculpture by the Sea" is an annual open-air exhibition along the clifftops between Bondi & Tamara - in 2009 the temptation for a spot of O-bombing got the better of me:

#31, statue...

I don't have a photo, but does anyone remember the large (wooden) grizzly bear which was the last control in the World Masters Final near Edmonton in 2005?

jj, all of the scultures (more than 120) had a catalogue number on a small plaque, and the catalogue had a map showing locations - all of the requirements for a O event.

Incidently artist's application to exhibit closes today (15th April) and the exhibition in Sydney will be open from 22 October to 8 November if one of the local clubs wants to "not organise" a fun event.

jjcote - surely man made feature!

From Swiss O-Week 2014

Matterhorn, foot of...

Also see this earlier thread Spectacular Control Locations

Don't have a photo, or know if it's still there, but I used a bank safe as a control site in a wood in Cork. It had been brought into the wood to blow it open.

@InvisibleLog...the control description for the boulder control would have gotten my attention!

I'll try to look up some real photos, but I've set some really nice "tourist controls" at Salmon La Sac, one of which was atop a giant slab of rock with a view kinda like this (hopefully it'll work if you're using the new Google Maps).

The most spectacular control location of recent memory was one of Peteris' "homebrew" races a few months ago, which had a control on a manmade item --a chair-- which was stop a cliff overlooking the Columbia gorge, something like this (the best view is to the northwest, though).

But the most spectacular control locations were at one of the Sprint the Golden Gate weekends, with a Friday evening course running at Point Bonita (here) as the sun was setting on the Pacific.

I don't have any photographs of the following two Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA) control locations, but they were certainly unique.

(q.v. Notes from the Briar Patch, March 2003, pp. 8-9)
"... Those on the long course at one French Creek [West] event will remember that famous "water stop," the Surreal Cafe, that she [Anne Fitch] cooked up with Matt Marcinek in the middle of a ruin - a table set with tablecloth, fine china and candelabra. ..."

At Valley Forge Fatlands, there was a control hung inside a large, hollow tree with room to spare for about six orienteers.

A view of icebergs from the Kangia Icefjord near Ilulissatt, Greenland

I didn't take a photo at the time, but a cannon from Crimean War, in front of Ely Catherdral, was used as a control at a low key urban evening event in Cambridgeshire, West Anglia Orienteering Club - photo here: http://www.ely.org.uk/cannon.htm

Pretty impressive and unique, I reckon.

One of the most scenic control locations I've ever seen was in the San Francisco Presidio, above the Golden Gate National Cemetary. It looked out over the rows of crosses in the military cemetary, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

So, when I arrive on one of these "breathtaking" control locations, am I supposed to take a couple of minutes to appreciate the scenery, take a few photos, maybe update also my status at Facebook, right?

All of the above. its not like its a race or something.

Make sure you phone someone to tell them what you're doing.

Seriously, the number of people I hear on phones telling their listening party that they're "walking down the stairs" is mind blowing. My mind is blown just thinking about it.

From Frazzle Rock last weekend